The Left and Elections in Rural Ireland 1973 to present October 5, 2012

The recent thread on WUAG leaving the ULA asked about the strength of the Left in rural Ireland.
Now I know electoralism is frowned upon by some on the Left but I figured electoral activity was a good way of trying to measure the strength or indeed presence of the Left in various places.
I have a good deal of old local election results myself in spreadsheets and books and old newspaper results supplements as well as electionsireland.org.
The only area where this may be incomplete results wise is Town Councils and UDCs.
I did my best in identifying what part of the political spectrum Independents were and I may have missed out various candidates or included in error .
Labour and Sinn Fein not counted as ‘Left’ for this.

From the below results it can be seen that from 1973 to today every county bar Leitrim has had a candidate from a Left party. This in turn would indicate that there was at some point a party organisation within those counties.

One thing that struck me looking at the results was how widespread OSF/SFWP/ WP were. As a party Dail seat wise and poll wise their trajectory went upwards from 1981 until the DL split. Yet its in 1979 that they had a far bigger geographical spread of candidates with candidates put forward in Cavan,Mayo, Laois, Offaly , Longford and Sligo. These were places where they never stood again. Did the local organisations die out in that time?

Carlow –
There have been OSF/WP candidates in General Elections for Carlow Kilkenny but these were all Kilkenny based.
Only record of a Left candidate I can find is Margaret O’Brien who ran for the Workers Party in the 1985 Local Elections in Carlow where she polled 91 votes.

Cavan
General Elections -No disernable Left candidates
Elected in Local Elections
Paul Doran elected as an Indpendent Socialist in for Cavan UDC in 1985

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A couple of bits of information – the Militant ran a number of members in the locals in 1985 as LP candidates – off hand I can remember Mick Martin somewhere in Dublin, Seamus O’Brien who was elected in New Ross and there was a candidate somewhere in Kildare. Militant members stod regularly in Letterkenny in 1979 and the 1980s.

Secondly – the SWP candidates in Clare in 2004, Damon and Karen Wise, were not actually members of the SWP. Damon has stood in a number of local elections as a disability rights candidate (Damon has Aspergers). In 2004 he couldn’t get enough signatures to be nominated as an independent so he rang around asking parties to nominate him and his wife – the SWP agreed. While Damon has some left leaning views he really should not be classed as a left wing candidate and his wife most certainly should not.

Thats correct I stood for Peoples Democracy in 1982. Joe Harrington, Mary O’ Donnell & Pat O’ Connor helped me in the campaign. Al Dowie signed my papers he had come to.. Shannon from the Shankill Road, East Belfast. Before getting eventually elected to the Town Commissioners, I secured a co-option on to the Town Commissioners with the support of Bridget Makowski IRSP,, Sinn Fein, Labour & Fine Gael

David Vipond stood for the CPI (ML) in a by election in Monaghan in a by election in 1973 and got 175 votes. I believe the CPI (ML) were going through their ‘peasant army’ building phase at the time. From what I have been told Vipond organised buses from Trinity (he was SU president) to go to Monaghan to canvass for him.

He also stood in South Down in the 1974 general election getting 152 votes. Apparently they were very disappointed with that result after their major vocal support for the UWC strike earlier in the year.

BICO? (if we’re calling them left). What was the CPI-ML’s line on the UWC? I thought they were all about ‘critical support’ for the Provos at that time. Isn’t that where the story about Vipond during that by-election comes from, that he was chased off some farmer’s land after referring to the strength of anti-imperialist consciousness among ‘the peasantry of Monaghan’.

I don’t remember support for the UWC strike. I do remember the newspaper from one of the CPI-ML’s predecessors around 1968 which told us that the Irish peasantry were at that time tenants whose landlords practiced the jus primae noctis.

The CPI (ML) were openly supportive of the UWC strike. The evidence has been provided on this blog on more than one occassion.

The CPI (ML) published ‘An analysis of the significance of the Ulster Workers’ Strike, May 14 – 30, 1974′ as part of ‘A series of articles from Red Patriot editorial staff.’ and published by the ‘Necessity for Change Institute of Anti-Imperialist Studies, 1974’.

The strike was lauded as a sign that “the workers of Ulster are going to participate in proletarian socialist revolution, are going to unite with their fellow Irish workers to settle matters with the British imperialists …”

That’s a really interesting light you shed there JRG on the CPI (ML)’s stance during that period – I hadn’t realised they took a line indistinguishable from B&ICO. One wonders what they thought of it subsequently.

CPI-M-L were anti-assembly but hardly supportive of the loyalist strike. They called the two-nations analysis a bogus analysis, one fostered by the bourgeoisie to split the working class. They were critically supportive of the Provos and had to endure death threats by loyalist paramilitaries in Belfast for their efforts.

At the same time, Militant was calling for the creation of a new, armed, Irish Citizens Army that would work in both loyalist and republican areas and unite the working class.

It’s first job would be to disarm bogus militias such as the Provos, the UDA and the UVF, and it called on the Irish trade union movement to be at the vanguard of this new armed citizens army.

At least one of these groups was in La-La land, not sure quite which one, though.

If Dundalk, Sligo, Clonmel, Kilkenny, Portlaoise, Ennis, Navan and Drogheda are ‘rural ireland’, then Dublin must be a market town.

Most of these aren’t truly rural in any real sense. The area which TCs only ever really take in the built up areas, so pretty much everyone with a vote lives and works in the town, and many of these are substantial towns.

Now it does reflect a reasonable spread around the country, that’s fair to say. But no major evidence really of any ability to appeal to rural communities. Some exceptions might include Piltown, Killorglin, Dunshaughlin (then, not now), GE constituencies maybe.

I think that with some exceptions, (SF, OSF/SFWP/WP) a factor has to be how lamentably little of value the Irish left has had to say about agriculture, particularly given how significant a sector of the economy it is, and indeed given it may well increase in importance. I made this point before here, i found it incredible that the ULA had nothing to say about AEOS being scrapped, nor seeking assistance for farmers ruined by the bad weather this summer.

fuly with you. disagree though on the position of the wp on farmers.Eoghan harris industrial revolution booklet from the 80s is an awful doc when itcomes to agri. sector. so wp have also maybe gone wrong in ways trying to shoe horn farmers into a coceptual box. hard for peoplsle to vote for parties that dont have much interest in them.

‘If Dundalk, Sligo, Clonmel, Kilkenny, Portlaoise, Ennis, Navan and Drogheda are ‘rural ireland’, then Dublin must be a market town.’
That’s what I thought when I saw the list of places as well! Anyone living in, or outside one of those towns could tell there’s a pronounced sense of not being rural if your a ‘townie’. You could also trace differing voting patterns between town and country going right back to the home rule era.

Yes, I’m at fault there, ‘rural’ would be overstating things. The original point of the thread though is the same. that there were Left groups all over the country that faded away or never grew.
I’ve actually a good few more to add to the above list, which I’ll do at some stage.
Thanks to Jolly Red Giant and others for adding names or clarifying others.

The distinction between rural and urban Ireland is somewhat exaggerated. After all its a rather small island. Cork ‘city’ always seemed to me to be a quite charming fairly large market town. It was the butter capital of the world at one stage.
And some of Ireland’s best known radicals were products of rural areas.

Although it might add several extra layers of confusion into the measure – and surely inconvenience the creator of this list (kudos, by the way) – I would think that Provisional Sinn Féin might be included from 1979 and on through the 1980s.

In terms of rhetoric, and many members, the organisation would have been considered ‘Left’ during this period. I think it was a Magill article from 1979 which asserted that, ideologically, the party was actually more ‘Left’ than even their rhetoric implied – and the rhetoric of that period was certainly full of many of the keywords that the other parties in the above list were employing.

The party had 30+ councillors in the twenty-six counties in 1983.

@JollyRedGiant:

Some very interesting points there re: Clare and Shannon, cheers for them. Greg Duff’s earlier political career was unknown to me.

I believe the provisional (pun intended) town council in Shannon, prior to its formal granting of town status, was made up of two representatives from each of the three major parties as well as Sinn Féin; which is perhaps indicative of the support the party had in the town. Although it was Brigid Makowski who took the ‘Left’ and ‘Republican’ vote in the town at its first local elections, such a seat and vote subsequently being held by Sinn Féin.

What is actually a surprise in Shannon, given the fact that a third of the town was from the North, was that SF (and Makowski) could never muster more than a single seat on the town council. Over the past 30 years I don’t think the membership of SF ever went into double figures. Up to 2,500 people in Shannon were originally from the North.

Although Shannon did and does have a sizable northern population (second and third-generation included), I am a bit sceptical about the numbers cited sometimes. I have come across references in newspapers from the 1980s attesting to one-third or one-quarter, but with no source referenced (granted, they are newspapers, not academic essays).

Certainly, in the first years of the 1970s, the proportion would have been considerable. But many of the people who first moved down from the north (particularly Belfast) subsequently returned home.

Regarding the relative underrepresentation – it still is a curious issue, you’re right. Arguably, this was down to Sinn Féin’s insistence on running northerners in the early election – and too many candidates at that – who, while they might have appealed to northern voters, appeared not to have goned own too well among others for whom Shannon became home.

Following those early mistakes, I don’t think Sinn Féin ran more than one candidate at any given time in Shannon – though ‘why not?’ is certainly a valid question.

Brigid was/is a one-woman wonder. Her votes seems to have come from hard work and people’s recognition that she would fight for them, not so much due to her political party and beliefs.

You are correct about Makowski – her vote was primarily down to hard graft and a small level of support for the IRSP/INLA.

The reason that SF didn’t run more than one candidate is because the never had enouugh votes to win more than one seat and sometimes struggled at that as well. 150 votes was sufficient to win a seat in the 1980s. In 1999 SF got 250 votes – in 2004 SF got 196 (the sitting SF councillor ran as an independent) – in 2009 I think SF got about 200 votes again.

Thanks , I have just been looking for information about this subject for a long time and yours is the best I’ve found out so far. But, what in regards to the conclusion? Are you certain in regards to the source?